Chapter 1

The gu master, Yushan, looked deeply troubled by my request.

“Deceiving His Majesty is a capital offense. It could cost me my head.”

“But I do feel terribly sorry for you, Your Highness…”

“Very well. I’ll do it. I only ask that once you leave the palace, you’ll look after my future wife.”

I hadn’t realized the matter was so serious.

I hurriedly shook my head.

“No, no. I don’t want to fake my death anymore.”

“Don’t be frightened. I’ll take the other gu now. Forgetting everything wouldn’t be so bad.”

As I spoke, I slipped the jade bracelet from my wrist.

“Give this to your fiancée. Consider it my wedding gift to you both.”

He looked at the bracelet and suddenly laughed.

Perhaps it was because he was so handsome, but his smile gave him an almost uncanny beauty.

“Such a pure, kind heart. You truly are a rarity, Your Highness.”

“I’m all alone in the world. Where would I find a fiancée?”

Realizing he’d been teasing, I smiled along, a little embarrassed.

“Oh. Oh, you were only joking…”

Yushan was still smiling.

“I can help you fake your death.”

“But have you really made up your mind? Once you’re dead, you’ll never see His Majesty again.”

I nodded without hesitation.

“I heard everything he said to you.”

“He finds me so tiresome. He’ll surely be happy if we never see each other again.”

“And will you be happy, Your Highness?” Yushan asked.

The question left me at a loss.

After a while, I said, “I don’t know.”

“I only know I’m a little sad now. Every time I look at him, it hurts a little more.”

My eyes grew hot. Not wanting to embarrass myself in front of Yushan, I blinked hard to hold back my tears.

Xiao Zhaoming and I had married by decree of the late emperor.

His origins were humble. His birth mother was a palace maid whom the emperor had taken to bed while drunk.

Naturally, a son born that way was never likely to be his favorite.

I heard that even the maids and eunuchs had tormented him when he was little.

But he had been exceptionally bright from childhood, upright and composed, and looked remarkably like the late emperor in his youth.

Little by little, he drew the emperor’s attention, until at last he became crown prince.

That was when I married him and became his crown princess.

Then I discovered that he seemed… rather different from the gentle, gracious man everyone described.

In private, he was always so quiet.

His body bore many scars.

Occasionally, when he was drunk, he would point to one and tell me which year he had received it, over what small matter, and which eunuch had deliberately hurt him.

When he wasn’t drinking, he treated me just as he treated everyone else around him.

Coldly. Distantly.

People came and went, and it seemed to make no difference to him.

I was someone who talked a great, great deal.

My brother always said, “Our Hehe is so clever. She could chatter so much she’d make a deaf man cover his ears and run away.”

Xiao Zhaoming probably felt the same.

“Cui Jinghe, where do you find so much to say?”

I didn’t understand that it was a rhetorical question. I thought he really wanted to know.

“What do you mean, where? I was born this way. Mother says that the very first day I learned to talk, I could say Mama, Papa, Brother, and Stone.”

“Stone was our cat.”

“Don’t you think I’m clever?”

“My family still praise me whenever they tell that story!”

I kept pestering him like that for two years.

Then the third prince accused Xiao Zhaoming of embezzling disaster relief funds.

Overnight, he became the deposed crown prince.

The blow seemed to crush him. He fell ill and could not leave his bed.

To be honest, I felt terribly sorry for him.

My family had always been close. We all cared for and looked after one another.

So I couldn’t understand why a father would be so cruel to his son.

His son was dying, yet he would not even ask after him.

Mother had said husband and wife were one and ought to stand by each other through hardship.

I didn’t want him to die.

So I knocked my forehead against the ground twenty-eight times before the eunuch guarding him.

I battered it bloody in exchange for a bowl of medicine to save his life.

But I never imagined that everyone around him knew the truth, except me, his unloved wife.

Xiao Zhaoming was only pretending to be ill.

Even the embezzlement charge and his deposition were merely part of a plan to retreat so that he could advance.